The annual UCLA Hollywood Range Report is continuous to chart the areas through which filmmaking stays unequal. The 2025 report, which examined the highest 100 English-language movie releases on main streaming platforms (Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, Max, Netflix, Paramount+, and Peacock) in 2024, discovered that, whereas movies with extra racially numerous casts carried out higher on streaming platforms, feminine filmmakers are nonetheless underrepresented in relation to huge price range options.
“We’re glad to see good points for variety with streaming movies, however the hole between film budgets for streaming and theatrical releases will get wider and wider,” Michael Tran, a sociologist and co-author of the report, stated in an official assertion. “It’s particularly troubling since solely a choose few, particularly males, are given the prospect to dip into the higher echelons of monetary backing.”
That hole had a staggering discrepancy: No lady or other-gender individual, no matter race or ethnicity, had the chance to direct a streaming movie with a price range of $100 million or extra in 2024. White girls proceed to be the more than likely to direct movies with the smallest budgets; all of their movies had a price range lower than $20 million, apart from the animated “Saving Bikini Backside: The Sandy Cheeks Film.”
The UCLA Hollywood Range Report started separating streaming movies from theatrical releases for evaluation in 2023. On the time, white males nonetheless directed the “supermajority of massive price range movies,” with 56 p.c of white girls administrators having budgets smaller than $20 million.
Two years later, and the statistic will not be a lot completely different.
In whole, 65.5 p.c of the highest streaming movies had budgets lower than $20 million, in comparison with 34.6 p.c for theatrical movies. On the opposite finish, solely 4.4 p.c of streaming movies had budgets of $100 million or extra, which is nearly 6 instances lower than the 26 p.c share in high theatrical movies. And male filmmakers have been the “solely administrators with this degree of assets,” because the examine discovered.
But streaming nonetheless stays extra numerous than theatrical: Administrators of colour accounted for 4 out of 10 administrators for streaming-released movies, versus solely two out of ten for theatrical motion pictures. “Hollywood loves formulation, however they want extra parts that resonate with the audiences of in the present day,” Ana-Christina Ramón, co-founder of the report and director of the Leisure and Media Analysis Initiative at UCLA, stated in a press release. “You may’t anticipate an more and more numerous inhabitants of avid film viewers and ticket consumers to accept a generic movie with little to no variety that will have been successful over ten years in the past. To ensure that Hollywood to outlive financially and to stay related, it should spend money on storytellers who deliver numerous views and new concepts to the desk.”
Ramón added, “Streaming platforms are one of many few locations the place the tales and faces that mirror the individuals of this nation will be discovered on and off display screen.”
The Hollywood Range Report sequence is in its twelfth yr. Whereas there are nonetheless strides to be made for behind the digicam gender fairness, the examine found a milestone for on-camera parity: In 2025, the report discovered that for the primary time, 1 in 2 leads of streaming movies have been individuals of colour, which is nearly double the share for high theatrical movies.
“Movies ought to mirror the realities of this nation by way of illustration,” Darnell Hunt, the chief vice chancellor and provost at UCLA, and co-founder of the report, stated in a press release. “We’re previous the purpose the place we are able to let the wholesale erasure of individuals’s identities, views and experiences slide. Having numerous tales pushes the boundaries of what we all know and perceive. Inclusive storytelling is required now greater than ever.”